Narciso Lopez

Narciso Lopez (2 November 1797-1 September 1851) was a Venezuelan revolutionary who was best-known for his failed 1851 expedition to liberate Cuba, which resulted in his death; he designed the modern flag of Cuba.

Biography
Narciso Lopez was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1797 to Basque parents, and he initially served under Simon Bolivar during the Venezuelan War of Independence before being conscripted into Jose Boves' royalist army and fighting against the patriots. He and several other defeated royalists fled to Spanish Cuba, and Lopez became a colonel in the Spanish Army at the age of 21. He fought in the First Carlist War, became a member of the Cortes from Seville, and served as military governor of Madrid before serving as an assistant to the Captain-General of Cuba until 1843. After a few business ventures failed, he became a partisan of the anti-Spanish faction in Cuba, and, in 1848, when the Spanish cracked down on the Cuban revolutionaries, Lopez fled to the United States.

After arriving in the USA, Lopez began to plan a filibustering expedition to liberate Cuba from the Spanish. He recruited Cuban exiles in New York City and other adventurers to his cause, and, in 1849, he and 600 men assembled at Round Island, Mississippi in preparation for the invasion. However, President Zachary Taylor had Lopez's ships blockaded and seized. Unfazed, the pro-slavery Lopez moved to New Orleans, where he spoke with prominent southerners, planning to have Cuba turn into a US slave state. Both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee declined to join the invasion, but he, with the help of prominent men such as Governor John Quitman of Mississippi, US Senator John Henderson, and the New Orleans Delta editor, Lopez enlisted 600 filibusters and reached Cuba in May 1850. His troops seized the town of Cardenas while flying a flag which Lopez had designed; this flag would later be adopted as the flag of modern Cuba. However, he failed to materialize support, so he had his army retreat with him back to Key West, Florida, disbanding his expedition before landing so that none of his men could be tried under the Neutrality Act. Lopez and many of his supporters were indicted by a federal grand jury, leading to Governor Quitman resigning and facing trial.

However, Lopez again insisted on liberating Cuba, and he planned another expedition. In August 1851, he departed for Cuba with several hundred Americans, Hungarians, Germans, and some Cubans, and he had half of his expedition march inland, while William Logan Crittenden and the other half remained on the northern coast to protect supplies. As in the first attempted invasion, local support never materialized, and Lopez and many of his men were captured by the numerically superior Spanish forces. Lopez, Crittenden, and many of the Americans were executed at the Castle La Punta in Havana. Lopez's death led to a mob attacking the Spanish consulate in New Orleans, and it also led to Southerners abandoning hope of the expansion of slavery and instead focusing on secession.